The association said Wednesday that the television tribute — titled “CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton” — will be recorded live at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville.
The tribute will air Oct. 21 at 6 p.m. Pacific on ABC and Disney+, and will stream on Hulu a day later.
In a news release, CMA described the special as a “joyful, emotional celebration” dedicated to Parton, the rhinestone-studded singer whose life began humbly, in a one-room cabin at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Robert Deaton, veteran executive producer of the Country Music Awards and Billboard Music Awards, will fill that role on the Parton project.
“Dolly gave Country Music its heart, and giving some of that heart back to her is an incredible honor,” said Deaton in a news release Wednesday. “My hope is simply that we do right by her story, her music and the people who love her, so that this evening feels like the tribute my friend deserves.”
Sarah Trahern, CMA chief executive, added that the tribute is the association’s “responsibility”: “This special is our way of saying thank you, on behalf of every artist, industry member and fan who found a piece of themselves in her music.”
The tribute is in partnership with Belmont University, which hosted the 2025 world premiere of “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” a biographical production about the “9 to 5” singer that is scheduled for its Broadway debut on Jan. 19, what would have been the Parton’s 81st birthday.
The university also previously launched “Dolly U,” an immersive educational partnership designed to connect students with hands-on opportunities in entertainment, media and creative industries.
Greg Jones, president of Belmont University, welcomed the special with a statement of his own: “It is a privilege to welcome artists, friends and fans from around the world to celebrate her extraordinary life and legacy from this stage in Nashville, honoring a woman whose love for Tennessee was woven into everything she did.”
Both the CMA and Belmont University will make a donation from the proceeds to Parton’s Imagination Library, which was launched by the Dollywood Foundation in 1995 to address childhood literacy by giving millions of children the gift of a free book each month. Disney will also support the program.
News of the television tribute follows an announcement last month by Parton’s estate that revealed plans for Dollyfest, a two-day celebration in Nashville and London next year across two consecutive weekends to honor her legacy.
Additional details for the CMA special, including performers and tickets, will be announced at a later date.
A federal film and television tax credit could boost U.S. production spending by $125 billion and add more than 143,000 jobs by 2035, according to a new study commissioned by the Motion Picture Assn.
The analysis, released Tuesday morning, is expected to bolster Hollywood’s push for a federal production incentive, which the industry says is necessary to compete with the generous credits offered abroad. Sixty-five nations now offer them, the study said.
The effort has been quietly building for more than a year. It got a major boost last month when President Trump posted on Truth Social backing a proposed credit.
Details are still being worked out,, but the study assumed a transferable credit with a minimum rate of 20% on qualified spending for U.S. resident labor — broadly what industry groups have supported. It also assumed add-ons of 5% for independent production companies and 5% for labor costs in areas the Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared disasters.
If the incentive took effect Jan. 1, 2027, U.S. production spending would reach $277.5 billion through 2035, the study said, compared with $152.2 billion without it.
A coalition that includes the Motion Picture Assn., industry unions, producers’ groups and small production businesses, along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, is expected to press the case at a virtual news conference Tuesday.
“A federal incentive would be a gamechanger for our industry,” Charles Rivkin, chairman and chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., said in a statement. “This study tells us that we can bring more opportunities to life for people in all 50 states who bring great stories to life.”
I did my first solo hike during a sunny September, seven years ago. After a summer of feeding and ferrying four noisy teenagers (and their friends) around, I was exhausted. But despite being bone tired, I had barely moved. I yearned, above all, for time on my own, for the chance to walk without interruption (and at the pace I chose), and for the silence of some empty wilderness.
But I was nervous. Not of being on my own, but of what might happen to me with no one around to help (breaking a bone, encountering a psychopath, being chased by a bull, getting fatally lost). I could have found a companion or joined a group, but my need for silence and solitude outweighed my fears.
It seems that many women feel the same: in the UK, the proportion of women solo hiking surged by 27% between 2020 and 2022. In America, 41 % of female hikers report regularly walking alone. And yet many women, although keen to do something similar, feel intimidated. According to researchers at the Munich University of Applied Sciences who are studying solo female walkers, 30% of women interviewed said they would like to hike solo but are hesitant.
In truth, women have long enjoyed a tradition of solo walking. From religious pilgrims to goat herders to 19th-century adventurers, there have always been women wandering, radically alone, through wild landscapes. But for those new to it, I’d say the best way to overcome your fear is to do it – and I’ve learned some simple ways to make the experience fun, not daunting.
That first solo hike followed a French canal. It was beautiful but sometimes felt a little too abandoned. It was also bereft of facilities, and frequently involved a long, complicated walk to my accommodation. So here are some of the things I now look for in a route: no discomfort-inducing stretches of urban wasteland; wide open landscapes (ridgeways, cliffs and hilltops are favourites); excellently waymarked, well-maintained paths (like national trails); navigation-lite routes that follow rivers, (lively) canals or coastlines; and countries/regions with a tradition of hiking.
I do my research with care, and I’ve always returned home exhilarated, revitalised and high on my own bravado. I’ve learned to avoid the trails where I might feel uncomfortable. I know now which landscapes calm me, and which trails are (almost) impossible to lose my way on.
For the last seven years, I’ve walked solo every autumn. Indeed, autumn is the perfect time for a liberating, empowering and restorative (solo) hike. Falling leaves improve visibility, temperatures are pleasant, and the days are still long enough to ensure I can reach my destination before dark. Importantly, there are lots of other walkers around – but without summer’s hordes – and the landscape is autumnally crisp and colourful.
If you’re new to solo walking, start with a single day. If you want to try walking for multiple days, consider paying for your luggage to be transported (or use a specialist tour operator who will plot your route, arrange accommodation and move bags). Otherwise pack as lightly as possible. Take a non-digital map and a stick/walking poles, and let someone know your arrival time. Study every aspect of your route – including transport options and the weather – before you set off.
FOUR GREAT ROUTES FOR SOLO HIKERS
The Bernese Oberland, Switzerland
Grindelwald, Berne Canton, Swiss Alps. Photograph: Ascent X Media/Getty Images
The Swiss Alps are one of my favourite places to walk alone. Swiss women are keen solo hikers (so no one bats an eyelid at yet another single woman), the waymarking is superb and the scenery is jaw-dropping. Because this is a nation of farmers and hikers, there are always people (and a phone signal) around. And yet – because of the mountainous terrain – there’s often a genuine sense of wilderness and solitude. The Bernese Oberland is overrun with tourists in summer, but come to this Unesco world heritage site in autumn and you’ll be walking, calmly, in the footsteps of dozens of 19th-century women who once came here specifically to hike alone. Base yourself in the car-free villages of Wengen or Mürren, and expect to find farm-cafes with homemade cakes and honesty boxes in the remotest of spots.
The South Downs Way
Chanctonbury Ring on the South Downs in West Sussex. Photograph: Cold Snowstorm/Getty Images
From Eastbourne To Kingston, near Lewes Time 2 days Distance 19 miles
The UK has plenty of well-kept trails, but top of my list is the (expansive, clearly signposted) South Downs Way. In summer the Eastbourne to Alfriston clifftop stretch heaves with tourists, but in autumn you’ll share the panoramic views – dazzling sea, dramatic chalk cliffs – with a handful of dogwalkers. Just a few steps off the trail are cultural hotspots like the pretty village of Alfriston, Charleston Farmhouse (museum home of the Bloomsbury set), and Rodmell, where you can visit Virginia Woolf’s house. So you’ll never feel completely disconnected.
Spectacular scenery near Staithes, on the Cleveland Way coastal section. Photograph: Madeleine Deaton/Getty Images
From Saltburn To Filey Time 4 days Distance 52 miles
The Cleveland Way was the UK’s second official national trail, meaning the route is well maintained, the signage is excellent and the scenery is glorious, covering coastline and windblown moors. The moors can feel bleakly exposed in the wrong weather, so opt for the four-day coastal section, Saltburn to Filey, with its quirky towns and villages. This is Yorkshire so expect plenty of conversation with passing walkers and the chance to feel romantically windswept – an intoxicating blend for the solo hiker who wants to feel alone in nature, but not too alone.
The Fishermen’s Trail, southern Portugal
A sandy cove and warm sea on the Fisherman’s Trail. Photograph: Calix/Alamy
From Praia da Luz To Sagres Time 3 days Distance 27 miles
The Fishermen’s Trail is far too hot in summer, but when I went (November) the temperature was just right, the sea was warm enough to swim in, and there were enough solo female hikers to feel pleasantly companioned. With some rocky scrambling to make one feel suitably youthful, and sufficient sandy coves to squeeze in a siesta, this route (a chain of old fishing villages) also has abundant, inexpensive accommodation and fresh seafood galore. Like other sea-hugging routes it’s (mostly) impossible to get lost – just follow the coastline.
I’ll leave the last word to writer Mathilde Blind, who (aged 19) walked alone through the Bernese Oberland in 1860 (no phone, no GPS, no bra, no waterproof trousers): “For once I felt truly free.”
Annabel Abbs is the author of The Walking Cure and Windswept: Why Women Walk. She was a guest of InnTravel on its Coastal Algarve and Fishermen’s Trail route, and of MACS Adventures on its Highlights of the Bernese Oberland route.
For Orville Peck, the best Sundays are basically all the same. And they are pretty similar to every other day of the week too. The masked country singer (and now actor) got sober three years ago and has figured out a routine that helps him stay clear-minded and present with the people in his life whom he cares about.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
“If I don’t keep up that routine, especially on a day like a Sunday, it quickly falls into no day feeling fun,” he says. “[The routine], which to some people is like, ‘Oh God, that looks like hell,’ is fun for me because it is fun for me to show up for myself.”
Peck’s latest album, “Mule,” which details his sobriety journey, is out Friday. That same day, he’s headlining the Hollywood Bowl, one of his favorite venues in the city.
Peck currently lives in the Hollywood Hills and has been in Los Angeles, on and off, for 18 years. “It’s definitely home to me,” he says. “I met my partner there. I’ve had some of the most important moments of my life in Los Angeles. I will always love this city.”
It’s also particularly conducive to his new lifestyle. “There’s a ton of other crazy people going to the gym and swimming and going to [12-step] meetings every single day,” Peck says. “So I’m in appropriately obsessive company for sure.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
5 a.m.: Early to rise
I wake up painfully early. I’ve been doing that since I was a toddler. I used to hold my mother’s eyelids open in the morning to get her to wake up.
When I wake up, the first thing I will do is meditation. I do transcendental meditation. I find every other form of meditation impossible. I’ll do TM for 20 minutes. My partner started doing it and I saw how much he was benefiting from it, so I decided to go and take the course and just loved it.
And then I’m an avid journaler, so I usually journal for probably about half an hour in the morning.
7 a.m.: Caffeination and hydration
I will make a very large iced coffee. I’m not snobbish about coffee, I’ll drink whatever.
I also fill up a massively obnoxious water bottle that has times on it that I carry everywhere. It looks like performative hydration, but it’s literally because if I don’t challenge myself to drink water, I just won’t drink water at all. It’s basically to shame myself into drinking water.
8 a.m.: Pool time, Part 1
I get to a public pool and I do laps. I grew up in South Africa and you’re forced to play every sport known to mankind. I always excelled at swimming, so it’s the one thing I still love to do. I just started up [again] within the last year.
I work out a lot, but when I’m at the gym, I don’t do any cardio. I’m never going to be on a treadmill or anything like that. Swimming feels like a fun way to keep me engaged.
10 a.m.: Meal prep
Then I go meet back up at home with my partner. We’ll go take our dog for a walk or we’ll go to a farmers market to get some produce for the week.
Then we’ll go grocery shopping because I love to cook. I will go to whatever is easiest. I’ll frequent a Gelson’s or a Ralphs or a Whole Foods. If I’m going to Whole Foods, I’m not doing regular grocery shopping. I want brands. I like a Coca-Cola.
I’d say I’m cooking usually about five or six nights a week. I’m very organized — I’m a Capricorn, if you can’t tell. I usually have a whole menu of what I’m going to do for the week, so I’ll get everything I need for that.
I will read a recipe or see a recipe I like, and then I will just freestyle it. I used to work in restaurants, so I feel pretty confident about it. But in terms of the style [of cooking], I’m best at recipes that take a long time, so anything that requires lengthy flavor building, like stews or curries.
Noon: Pool time, Part 2
Back at the house, we’ll have some lunch, something easy by the pool. So more swimming.
2 p.m.: Gym time
I’ll work out either at the house or go out to the gym. I’ve been sticking with a weight training routine for a couple of years now, but I try to evolve the exercises all the time because I get bored really easily.
Sometimes I work with a trainer. I filmed “Street Fighter” last year in Australia, so I did a ton of different training and martial arts training for months. It opened up my horizons to a lot of different forms of working out that I just didn’t know before. I’ve got a pretty big encyclopedia to pull from at this point.
4 p.m.: Recovery
I’ll usually head to a 12-step meeting, I’ll either catch one online or try to find one in person because there’s a lot around L.A.
6 p.m.: Not cooking tonight
On the weekend is where we will typically order in or eat out, maybe with some friends. Some places I love to order in from are the Sisters Cafe, which is Vietnamese, and Jon and Vinny’s.
9 p.m.: Early to bed
Both my partner and I are 80 years old at heart. We always have grand plans about watching a movie or whatever, and then we’re both inevitably snoring by 10 p.m. at the latest.
I used to live my life like a psycho maniac doing everything unhealthy. It definitely didn’t involve going to 12-step meetings and swimming laps at seven in the morning. It was whatever the opposite of that is.
When I went through the first two years of my sobriety, I went through a lot of trial and error in terms of overdoing it with things like therapy and mindfulness, and then also underdoing it as well. It took me a couple of years to really find what are the things that make me feel good about myself, make me feel grounded, make me feel accountable, and still feel like I’m living a happy life and not just white-knuckling 12 hours of, essentially, therapy every day. So I’ve found the things that really work for me.
There’s days where I will totally not do every one of those things. There’s days where I’m too lazy to go swimming and there are days where I’m like, “I don’t want to go to the gym.” I’m not militant about it. The other thing I’ve learned is to be easy with myself.
If you’re looking to add more magic to your life after watching Practical Magic 2, one woman has praised a village which feels like the real deal – and it’s in the UK
The charming village has a magical history, as the most famous witch used to live there (stock image)(Image: Thomas Faull via Getty Images)
The highly anticipated sequel to the cult classic film Practical Magic recently premiered in cinemas. But while it’s always magical to return to the universe of your favourite film, what if you could visit a real life Practical Magic village?
In the book and the film, the Massachusetts small town where the Owens family lives appears to be the idyllic small town. And with the added element of having witches living there, many fans dream of visiting. But one village in the UK also has a unique connection to witches, making it the perfect alternative.
One holidaymaker named Emma decided to share snippets of her visit to the Hampshire village, naming it a ‘real life Practical Magic village’.
“POV: You found a real life Practical Magic village in England,” she wrote in the overlay text of the TikTok video, showing the various witchcraft and magic-inspired shops, as well as the wild horses that are known to explore the village of Burley.
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Burley is a small village in Hampshire, located in the heart of the New Forest. It’s famous for its associations with witchcraft, as it had a self-proclaimed witch living there in the 1950s. However, there is plenty of other things to do there with an opportunity for walking, cycling, and horse-riding trails, plus horse-drawn carriage rides through the forest.
Emma added in the caption of the post: “Today, the village is filled with cosy cafes, witchy boutiques, and wild horses roaming down the streets.”
The village still maintains the ancient New Forest tradition of “commoning,” meaning ponies, cattle, and donkeys wander freely through the streets.
“It genuinely feels like stepping straight into the Owens family hometown,” she said. “Gather your coven and save this for your next UK day trip.”
Why is Burley considered a ‘witchy’ village?
Burley is associated with witches primarily because it was home to a woman named Sybil Leek. The famous self-proclaimed “white witch” lived in the Hampshire village during the 1950s.
She became a media sensation by openly practicing witchcraft shortly after the UK repealed the final Witchcraft Act in 1951. She regularly walked through the village wearing a long black cloak with her pet jackdaw, Mr. Hotfoot Jackson, perched on her shoulder.
But as locals were upset by her presence, Sybil decided to move to America where she continued to study and write about the occult and astrology.
Burley has since embraced its witchy history, as there are several shops specialising in magic, including A Coven of Witches, which was not only named by Sybil but you can also find a portrait of her hanging above the fireplace.
War in the Middle East. The hottest summer on record in the U.S. AI getting as scary as “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” An eroding coastline. A president who spends more time posting pathetic memes than improving the lives of everyday Americans.
It sure seems like we’re living in the End Times, right?
Why, we haven’t even reached the most frightening part of 2026: Election Day, when false prophets will besmirch ballots as the Great Deceiver, also known as Donald J. Trump, does everything possible to maintain his reign.
While people should research candidates and ballot initiatives before deciding how to vote, I also suggest that they read up on some of the thousands of saints recognized by the Catholic Church. You don’t have to belong to the faith to find wisdom in the lives of people who dealt with trials and tribulations far harder than ours and are now considered worthy of emulation.
This campaign season contains all sorts of scenarios screaming for holy intervention. We should pray extra hard to these saints for the next two months:
St. Homobonus: The Catholic Church recognizes no patron saint for the wealthy, since Jesus preached that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Captains of industry instead venerate this 12th century Italian nepo baby, who ran a successful clothing business yet gave most of his earnings to the poor. If tech bros followed St. Homobonus’ example, that would be a far more convincing argument against Prop. 40, the California ballot initiative that would impose a (supposed) onetime tax on billionaires, than what they’re doing: whining about socialism, threatening to leave California and spending tens of millions of dollars on ads that voters are already tuning out or tossing in the trash.
Archangel Gabriel: His role in telling the Virgin Mary she would become the mother of Jesus makes my brother’s namesake the patron saint of mail carriers. With Trump doing everything possible to ban mail-in voting — and a compliant Postal Service leadership eager to do his bidding — here’s to hoping Archangel Gabriel calls up his winged homeboys Michael and Raphael, fights off all electoral Satans and ensures a fair election.
St. Benedict: Patron saint of exorcisms. Someone place his prayer card at all the city halls in southeast L.A. County to rid the area of civic corruption once and for all!
St. Peter Claver: Chapters of the Knights of Peter Claver — the oldest Black Catholic fraternal organization in the U.S. — exist in parishes across South L.A. Some in the area are fretting because, for the first time in 63 years, not all of its three City Council seats will be held by Black representatives. With Curren Price terming out, a Latino immigrant — either Jose Ugarte or Estuardo Mazariegos — will capture the District 9 seat. May the winner follow the example of Claver, who spent his life advocating for Black people in Colombia despite the fact he was a white Spaniard, and ensure that Black Angelenos — now only 8% of the city’s population — continue to have strong representation at City Hall.
St. Augustine: The founder of the Augustinian order to which Pope Leo belongs, he’s the patron saint of converts and preached against the haughty. “They uplift themselves,” Augustine wrote, “as though they were righteous or important but, as Paul writes, ‘Like smoke they will not last because their insanity will soon become obvious to everyone.’” Are your ears burning yet, JD Vance? Do you feel a tingle on your neck, Gavin Newsom?
Xavier Becerra, left, and Steve Hilton during a California gubernatorial candidate debate Feb. 3 in San Francisco.
(Laure Andrillon / Associated Press)
St. Stephen and St. Francis Xavier: They share names and attributes with Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra, who are running against each other to become California’s next governor. Becerra has spent his decades-long political career serving as missionary for California liberalism, just like Francis Xavier helped make the Jesuits a worldwide institution. Of the two St. Stephens, one was a former king who’s the patron saint of Hungary, birthplace of Hilton’s parents. Far more relevant is the St. Stephen who was the first Christian martyr. The way Hilton is sacrificing his political life in the name of Trump, he’d better ask that Stephen to tell God not to make his likely electoral demise too painful.
Our Lady of Refuge: Although St. Junípero Serra was the Apostle of California, this Marian apparition has been the patroness of the Golden State since the days when we were part of Mexico. Sinners ask her to beg God for forgiveness on their behalf — and isn’t that what we all will do when our chosen candidate inevitably messes up?
St. Thomas: He’s the patron saint of India, where Los Angeles city councilmember and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman was born. He’s also the patron saint of architects, too many of whom have sat around with their hands tied up in red tape while waiting to rebuild Pacific Palisades after last year’s inferno, a stasis that many residents will forever blame on Mayor Karen Bass. But history better remember the Apostle as Doubting Thomas, who refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until feeling the holes in His crucified hands. Let’s hope Angelenos are as skeptical about the claims of both Bass and Raman that they, and only they, can revive L.A.
St. Clare of Assisi: She died in the 13th century, but the Italian nun was named the patron saint of television in 1958 because she could see a Mass held far away, despite being bedridden. May St. Clare convince God to short-circuit networks and streaming services every time another annoying political ad interrupts me while I’m watching the latest episode of “Project Runway.”
St. Thomas More: The patron saint of politicians famously stood up to England’s King Henry VIII and his philandering, unethical ways. May St. Thomas More’s witness inspire someone in Trump’s cabinet to do the same.
Eh, who am I kidding? Some things are beyond even God.
When Strictly foxtrots back on to our screens later this month, it will be the first time in 14 years without longest serving female pro dancer Karen Hauer, who shimmied her way through more than 100 numbers on the show. But she’s not ready to kick off her dancing shoes just yet – revealing her ambition to cha-cha her way into the role of fiery Puerto Rican, Anita, in West Side Story. She says: “My dream role would be Anita in West Side Story. The world is my oyster.”
When Strictly’s new season launches on Saturday 19 September, it will also be the first time Karen has watched it live. She says: “I’ve never watched it live – I was always in it.”
And Karen – who announced her departure in a statement on social media in March – is not the only high profile departure. Longtime hosts Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly have also left, as have pro dancers Gorka Márquez, Nadiya Bychkova, Luba Mushtuk and Michelle Tsiakkas. Karen says: “Things have to evolve. Whether people like it or not.”
But Karen will be rooting for the new hosts, Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Rabede. She says: “The new series is so exciting. I’ll definitely be watching my friends and I’m really looking forward to seeing Johannes, Emma and especially Josh. I danced with him on the Christmas Special dressed as penguins.”
Karen, who was in the show from 2012 to 2025, has already started her new chapter – playing teacher Mavis in Devonshire Park Theatre’s production of the Richard Harris comedy, Stepping Out in Eastbourne until the end of April, before taking it on tour until the end of September. She will then be playing the Wicked Queen in Snow White at The Princess Theatre, Torquay, in December and January.
She says: “I’d been preparing myself mentally for a long time to leave [Strictly]. I’m doing great, I’m really happy. I’m going to miss Strictly, but I’m definitely enjoying my new chapter.”
But the dancer was shocked by the outpouring of love she felt from fans when she announced her departure. She says: “I’ve never felt so much love. I made such an impact without even actually knowing. I was shocked. I was like, ‘how come you guys didn’t vote for me to win?’ Goddamn it.”
Giving no dramatic reason for going, she simply says it was “the right time” to go, adding: “There’s a time when you just have to go, ‘okay, well, that’s a wrap.’ Now I have free time. I don’t know what’s going to happen in five years. So, I’m literally living the best life that I can right now, and not overthinking about the future.”
The first to admit to being a romantic, Karen has had three husbands. She was married to dancer Matthew Hauer from 2000 to 2009, to fellow Strictly pro dancer Kevin Clifton from 2015 to 2018 and then to fitness professional Jordan Wyn-Jones from 2022 to 2023.
But she now shares her rural home near Preston, Greater Manchester, with her boyfriend of three years, rugby player Simon Davidson and four rescue dogs, Betty, Phoebe, Marley and Joe. After her hectic Strictly schedule, she says of Simon: “It’s probably really weird for him to have me home.”
Positive she has now found ‘The One,’ she continues: “I love love. I think love is incredible, and I found it in Simon. I love being in a partnership, and in a partnership that’s healthy. “Knowing what a healthy relationship looks like and being in it … I think that’s what I love is, and that’s what I’ve been searching for. Joy for me is being at home with Simon and the dogs.”
Honouring her love of dogs, in November, Karen is hosting the The Burns Bravery Awards, in which the pet nutrition brand is calling on people to nominate Britain’s Bravest Dogs. Research from Burns Pet Nutrition reveals that three-quarters of owners say they turn to their dog when they’ve had a bad day.
And Karen can see why, saying: “My rescue dogs are the best thing to ever happen to me. Mentally, physically, my dogs get me out of bed, they get me out for a walk. My dogs have been through all my ups and downs. I think my dogs need therapy now.”
The dancer also turns to her mum Mirian when she needs comfort or inspiration. She says: “She inspires me every day. ‘It’s not going to be easy, kid, but you got this’ – that’s what I’ve always known since I was a kid. I’ve always fought and I’ve seen my mum struggle. I’ve seen what it takes to make it – not just as a person on television, but to make it in life.
“My mum raised three kids in New York City, in the Bronx, on her own. She always says, ‘don’t let your head get to the clouds.’ And that’s why I’ve always been very grounded, no matter what kind of job or who I’ve met. We’re all the same. On Strictly, I was never the flashy one, I was always grateful that first of all I had a job – and one that I loved and which entertained the entire nation.”
Karen made it to the Strictly final twice, with partners Jamie Laing and Mark Wright, but never lifted the glitterball. She says: “I was winning every year just being there. It’s great getting a 10, it’s fantastic, but it’s the moments that bring a smile to people’s faces and make them go, ‘That was really funny’, that I’ll remember the most.”
One such moment was when Anton Du Beke and Ann Widdecombe danced together at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom in 2010. This hilarious moment was how she likes to remember the long serving former Conservative MP, who died on July 9, aged 78, and whose death is now the subject of a murder inquiry.
Speaking fondly of Ann and Anton, Karen says: “He took her by the hand and the foot and was just swinging her around in a yellow dress. I was on the floor, peeing myself. It’s those moments, that’s what Strictly’s about.” Meanwhile, Karen gave her many famous Strictly partners – who included Westlife’s Nicky Byrne, actor Greg Wise and comedian Jayde Adams – the same advice.
She says: “I told all of my celebrities, ‘you have to enjoy it. We’re going to work hard, but I want to have a laugh. If you’re not having a laugh, then this is not going to work.’ A lot of people find it really hard to enjoy it, because there’s so much panic.”
Another of Karen’s favourite moments came in 2019, during Halloween week, when her wig came clean off her head on live TV.
“It was hilarious,” says Karen. “But so what if your wig comes off? People are going to remember that you made them smile. That’s what I’ll remember when I’m 85 … or dancing with Jeremy Vine coming out of a bath, or with the late Dave Myers, who I absolutely adored. Wow, I was living the dream, wasn’t I?”
*Following a public voting period, winners will be announced at the Burns Bravery Awards in November. For more information, and to nominate your dog, enter at burnspet.co.uk/pages/burns-bravery-awards
SACRAMENTO — Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor he has vowed to block executions if elected in November.
Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”
Those comments have reassured anti-death penalty advocates wary of Becerra, who has stated throughout his career that capital punishment should be an option for victims seeking justice. He reiterated that stance just a decade ago during his confirmation hearing for attorney general, though he also expressed concerns about the unjust application of the punishment.
“I support the death penalty, but I hate the way it’s being executed,” Becerra told state lawmakers in 2017.
“If you commit some heinous crime where you have taken the life of someone else, and you knew that there was a death penalty in place in that place where you committed that crime, then you should face the punishment for what you’ve done,” he explained. “It doesn’t give me pleasure to say that, but I simply do believe there’s a simple justice in that.”
Becerra’s challenger in the Nov. 3 election, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, opposes the death penalty but said he would rescind Newsom’s moratorium because it defies the will of voters.
Becerra has said he is concerned by how death sentences historically have been applied, including a highly disproportionate number of condemned inmates who are Black or Latino men and cases in which they later have been exonerated of crimes.
He repeated similar positions last year during a gubernatorial forum in Los Angeles.
“I do not believe every Californian has gotten a fair verdict in these fights,” he said in response to a question about extending Newsom’s moratorium. “But here is what I will tell you: We have to be aggressive in going after crime, especially the most heinous crime. … I will make sure that we have a judiciary system and a prosecution system that takes into account that we must show fairness.”
Though California has not performed an execution since 2006, prosecutors in some areas of the state continue to seek and win death sentences. As of early August, there were 565 condemned inmates in California prisons, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Newsom’s moratorium stops the state from carrying out those sentences.
In California, county district attorneys are responsible for prosecuting the vast majority of accused murderers when they go to trial and also deciding whether to seek the death penalty. The office of the state attorney general is responsible for defending death penalty convictions on appeal.
Becerra sought the death penalty in a murder case his office prosecuted early in his tenure, though unsuccessfully. Scott Dekraai, who was convicted of killing his ex-wife and seven others in a shooting at a Seal Beach beauty salon, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a prosecution scandal involving his case.
Some death penalty opponents criticized Becerra for fighting to uphold the death sentence of Robert Lewis Jr., who was deemed by the California Supreme Court in 2018 to have an intellectual disability thatmade him ineligible for execution.
“I find that reprehensible,” said Mike Farrell, president of Death Penalty Focus, an advocacy group. A longtimeanti-death penalty activist, Farrell is better-known for starring as B.J. Hunnicutt in the TV show “M*A*S*H.”
“It may not have been his idea, but he was part of that process,” he said of Becerra.
Others said Becerra cannot be blamed for doing his job. Former Vice President Kamala Harris faced the same dilemma when she served as state attorney general, as does Rob Bonta, who currently holds the office.
“The AG is in a different position because it’s just inherent in their role to defend convictions and sentences,” said Natasha Minsker of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition. “For example, Kamala Harris is very strongly personally opposed to the death penalty and still, while she was AG, the office defended hundreds of death sentences. Same with Rob Bonta. He’s very clearly personally against the death penalty, and his office continues to defend death sentences.”
Hilton, his Republican opponent in the race, holds starkly different views.
“If you’re arguing that taking a life is such a serious crime, then I don’t think responding by taking a life actually makes that argument,” he said in an interview last month.
But he said California voters spoke clearly by voting twice — in 2012 and 2016 — against ballot measures that would have repealed the death penalty. “I don’t think it’s OK for a governor to just substitute their personal opinion on an issue where the voters had an explicit and direct say,” he said.
“I strongly believe in holding people accountable for what they do,” Hilton said. “But my sort of fundamental belief is that if we’re saying it’s wrong to kill someone, then the state shouldn’t be doing it, either.”
Hilton also would roll back Democratic-led reforms that have shortened many inmates’ prison sentences by allowing them to seek parole sooner.
End or extend? It’s not that simple
Even if a governor rescinds the moratorium, resuming executions would be a long and complicated process because the state has no approved protocol or facilities to carry out death sentences.
Newsom ordered the dismantling of San Quentin’s death row and execution chamber. Even before he took office, the state’s use of lethal injection drugs was part of a long-running and now-dormant legal battle. And a dwindling number of attorneys who specialize in death penalty cases meant 70% of condemned inmates did not have a lawyer at the end of last year, according to a state report.
California’s death penalty also faces a new legal challenge from groups arguing that capital punishment cases have been administered in a way that is racially discriminatory. In May, the California Supreme Court ordered the attorney general’s office to respond to the arguments and assigned the case to a superior court.
The shifts in California’s criminal justice system are reflected in legal battles waged by the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that supports victims of crime and their families in court.
“We used to do a lot of work in the capital punishment area because that was the area where justice and the sentences were under the greatest attack,” said Kent Scheidegger, the group’s legal director.
But as California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature, governor and, at times, voters adopted measures aimed at reducing the prison population, Scheidegger said the foundation’s efforts increasingly are focused on preserving “the finality of sentences.”
Many capital cases were negotiated as “plea bargains to life without parole on the express promise that this will provide the finality that the victims need most,” he said. “Life without possibility of parole, until recently, meant life without possibility of parole. And now we’ve got one action after another coming out of the government to break down that finality and give people sentenced to life without parole opportunities to get out.”
The group has challenged attempts to expand early release for violent offenders under 2016’s Proposition 57 and new regulations that would allow people sentenced to life without the possibility of parole to seek release.
Twenty-seven states allow the death penalty, but governors in four of them — California, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have paused executions.
Slow shifts in public opinion
Attitudes about capital punishment have shifted over time. A 2025 Gallup poll showed 52% of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, down from its peak of 80% in 1994.
In a 2023 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, 62% of adults in the state said they “strongly favor” or “somewhat favor” the death penalty in murder cases. When asked which punishment they prefer for a first-degree murder case, 55% said life without parole and 43% chose the death penalty. More than three-quarters believe there “is some risk that an innocent person will be put to death.”
Despite the changing opinions, Minsker, of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition, said there’s little appetite for another repeal attempt because of how expensive ballot measure campaigns have become.
“I am personally one of the strongest proponents of ending the death penalty, and I am not sure I would spend $30 million on that right now, given all the other needs that California has,” said Minsker, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who ran the unsuccessful 2012 death penalty repeal measure.
Putting an anti-death penalty measure on the statewide ballot also could have put Newsom in an precarious political position. If it failed, Californians would be sending a stinging rebuke to the Democratic governor’s executive decision to grant a blanket reprieve to all condemned inmates.
Minsker is leading a group of criminal justice advocates, faith organizations, prosecutors, murder victim family members and others urging Newsom to commute every death sentence in California before he leaves office.
But advocates are unsure whether Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028, would risk the backlash a mass commutation would probably bring. The California Supreme Court also must review executive clemency actions for inmates with more than one felony charge.
Commuting all death sentences to life in prison “would be the coup de grâce,” Farrell said. “However, politically, I’m sure those who are advising him are urging him to have caution in that regard.”
Known for being ‘The GC’ on screen and larger than life, viewers will see a different side to Gemma Collins in her new Sky documentary series.
Gemma Collins has not had a lot to celebrate whilst making her Sky series.
Gemma Collins admits she has had “the worst year of her life” which corresponded with a time she had cameras following her every move.
The former TOWIE star, also known by her celebrity persona ‘GC’, and was due to get married to partner Rami and start a family during filming for Sky documentary series called ‘Gemma Collins: Everything. All At Once’. The series was originally called Four Weddings and a Baby, but as Gemma admits “things didn’t go to plan”.
Her relationship with Rami has had issues, the pair have also been sadly unable to conceive, and worst of all Gemma’s beloved mum Joan died at the end of July after several years of health issues. Admitting her life and TV series hasn’t been going to plan, 45-year-old Gemma said: “Mum’s been unwell for sixteen years and I’ve been dealing with that on the side, but her health started going downhill during filming and she passed away last month[actually July 2026].
“My fiancé Rami has also been struggling with his mental health and using alcohol to cope, and on top of that we had fertility issues. It was like drowning. It was the worst year of my life. I couldn’t keep hiding it.
“Being The GC was escapism. I could put the make-up on, get the hair big, and forget what was going on in the real world. But there’s been a real turn in media where people want to see the real me again. They’re sick of the bluff. I’m not afraid and I know I don’t need to deal with all this on my own.”
In the eight part series viewers will see Gemma embark on her fertility journey, and she questions whether she has left things too late, putting her career before having a family. On trying for a baby Gemma says: “Rami and I went to the Portland, and I started thinking maybe there could be a miracle. We could get an egg donor and make it work. But, as you’ll see on the show, it got increasingly difficult.
“I still have Tristan, and my nephews. I’ve known Tristan since he was three: I did his nappies, I gave him his bottles. I love that boy. With my mum gone, I’m going to be the mum of the family now, the matriarch, and I’m really happy and excited for that. If it’s meant to happen, my mum will send it to me, and a miracle will happen. If it doesn’t, I’m at peace with that.”
Gemma admitted she found filming on some days very hard but insisted she had to continue. The other deeply personal issue in the series is the loss of her mum Joan, and Gemma allows the cameras into moments like when she deals like this and when the bravado she usually uses on screen drops.
She said: “The camera crews are at your house and you’re thinking, ‘This is my life, it’s so s**t. How can I let people see it?’. But unless you go through hard times, I don’t think you grow as a person. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also the thing I’m most proud of.”
On her mum Gemma added: “My mum passed away peacefully, and we were all in the room. She’s come back to me in so many ways already, which gives me great comfort. She comes back to me in spiritual ways and sends me signs. There was this butterfly in the house towards the last few days of my mum living, and it wouldn’t go away. When she passed, Tristan went to me, ‘There’s Nanny’. He went, ‘Nanny, if that’s you, flap your wings ten times,’ and it did.”
* Gemma Collins: Everything. All At Once launches 15 September on Sky and streaming service NOW.
As a young sportswriter studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Seth Wickersham looked to Los Angeles for inspiration. At the campus bookstore, Wickersham bought his first sportswriting anthology, “The Last of the Best,” a collection of columns from the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray, one of four sportswriters ever to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Collections of work from Murray, Rick Reilly, Frank Deford and others offered Wickersham a road map for the career he wanted to build — and he has, with 26 years’ worth of work at ESPN meriting an anthology of his own. “Be on That Hill: Stories From the Summits of Sport,” which will hit bookshelves Sept. 22, is Wickersham’s third book. He said assembling an anthology is both “the coolest thing you could ever imagine happening” and “this weird mind warp.”
“When you’re just on a treadmill like I’ve been, the years just go,” says Wickersham, who’s been covering sports since he was hired by ESPN The Magazine straight out of college. “You don’t realize it, but then you take stock of it, and you’re like, ‘Holy cow, I’ve been doing this 26 years …’ It’s surreal to go back and look at it.”
Football has always been Wickersham’s first love — he weaved his journey as a high school quarterback into “American Kings” — but his latest book features stories about a college basketball coach on the job hunt and an NHL enforcer’s attempts to avoid head injuries.
“I’m trying to write about people who have a certain level of inner turmoil,” Wickersham says, “whether it’s Sean McVay after he wins the Super Bowl, or Jerry Jones when he’s threatening to sue the NFL to stop Roger Goodell from signing a contract extension.”
The sports media industry has changed dramatically since Wickersham’s career began. ESPN The Magazine no longer exists. Access to coaches and players is increasingly hard to secure. But Wickersham’s journalistic goals are the same today as they were when he bought Murray’s anthology.
“I want to be a link on a chain,” he says. “It’s hopefully an installment of a body of work that one day might help me be a link on a chain of the best who did this.”
This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
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In addition to Jim Murray’s anthology, here are some other sports books that have inspired Wickersham.
“The Breaks of the Game” by David Halberstam: This is the Pulitzer-winning Halberstam’s first sports book, following the 1979-1980 Portland Trail Blazers. “When it comes to trying to decode a team, that’s the standard,” Wickersham says.
“Joe Namath and the Other Guys” by Rick Telander: Namath, the Hall of Fame New York Jets quarterback, serves as an example of quarterbacks’ rising celebrity profile in “American Kings,” and Telander is one of Wickersham’s favorite sportswriters. “The portrait he gave of Joe Namath in his twilight was just so rare,” Wickersham says. “I don’t think a book like that has ever been done.”
“When Nothing Else Matters” by Michael Leahy: Another book about an athlete in his twilight. This one documents Michael Jordan’s time with the Washington Wizards. “He worked his tail off as a reporter and really gave a brutally honest glimpse into what it was like to live and play with Michael Jordan the last few years of his career,” Wickersham says.
“The Franchise” by Michael MacCambridge: Wickersham read this history of Sports Illustrated in college. “It really not only gave a glimpse into how so many of these great stories by my heroes … were done,” he says, “but also how those guys got hired at Sports Illustrated. It was like a job road map.”
📰 The Week(s) in Books
Our fall book recommendations answer your call for learning and discovery this season.
(Kissi Ussuki / For The Times)
Our Fall Preview includes 29 books to keep on your radar this fall, as well as television and movies we’re excited about.
This week, we caught up with Raine De Leon, owner of Sons and Daughters Books, a formerly online bookstore that opened a brick-and-mortar location earlier this year. Here’s what they had to say about their IRL location, the local bookshops that inspired them and more.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Your bookstore began as an online store in 2024. What motivated you to open an online store? How did it grow from there?
A brick-and-mortar was always the end goal, since I wanted a physical space for writers, readers and other artists to come together for events and community building. Originally, the online store was actually an online poetry journal, where I published poets from around the world, wrote reviews, and held virtual readings. I wanted to translate that into an in-person experience.
What other bookstores, in Los Angeles or elsewhere, served as inspiration for the type of bookstore you wanted to open?
Skylight Books in Los Feliz and Village Well Books and Coffee in Culver City really inspired how I wanted the store to feel: warm, inviting and dynamic enough to serve both a neighborhood and a larger L.A. audience. I took inspiration from the Painted Porch in Texas in regard to curating the selection of books in the store. City Lights in San Francisco was also a huge inspiration for not only my store, but my life in general. The place it holds in the history of its community, the history of publishing and the history of poetry are profound, and I am trying to emulate that legacy as best I can.
What inspired the name Sons and Daughters Books?
The poet Charles Olson wrote a landmark essay, “Projective Verse,” in 1950. In it, he talks about poetic lineage and influence, and he says something to the effect of “We are the sons of the poets who came before us,” and that really spoke to me. I expanded it out to “Sons and Daughters,” with that same sentiment, to be a little more inclusive.
What type of selection can people expect at Sons and Daughters Books?
Our selection is almost all new books with focus on fiction, poetry, social sciences and more. We also have a cart of used books out on the floor every day, and on Sundays I bring out two more carts of used books.
For the new books, I selected each book in the store myself. I may not have read every book on these shelves, but I went line by line in our inventory sheets to select books that I wanted people to be aware of. Even though I am the only staff member, our “Staff Rec” table features reviews and picks from those closest to me. I wanted our selection to be extremely specific to me, my loved ones and the community the store is now in.
In the time you’ve been open, what events have been the most popular? Any particular upcoming events you’re excited about?
Our two most popular events are definitely our weekly stand-up comedy open mic night and our thriller book club.
September is our fullest month yet in regard to events, and I’m very excited for a few. We have two book launch events. The one on Sept. 26 is for “Valley Girl Manifesto” by Noelle Cope, a collection of both poetry and prose. The other, on Sept. 19, is for “Anger Is a Gift,” a new poetry anthology from FlowerSong Press. Both celebrate poetry, locality and connection.
Our full events calendar, which continues to grow, also features community workshops, silent reading clubs and more.
Sons & Daughters is located at 7817 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles.
Michael Lomonaco can account for every minute of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 — including the small decision that saved his life.
Lomonaco, the executive chef who ran Windows on the World on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was on his way up to his office when he stopped at an optometrist shop on the ground level to have his eyeglass frames adjusted.
He was still inside when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the tower above him at 8:46 a.m.
“I felt the buidling shake,” he recalled in the new CNN Films documentary “Top of the World.” “And I thought that can’t be the subway. That’s impossible.”
Lomonaco was evacuated. From the street, he watched employees of his own restaurant wave a white tablecloth from a window more than 100 floors up. Seventy-nine Windows on the World employees and 91 guests died that morning in the gastronomic soul of the Twin Towers — the one part of the complex that belonged to New Yorkers who didn’t work there, and to visitors from everywhere else.
“Top of the World” premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CNN and begins streaming the following day on the network’s subscription streaming platforms. The documentary short arrives on a double anniversary: 25 years since the attacks, and 50 years since Windows on the World opened on April 19, 1976.
It is the work of producer-director team Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who made “RBG,” the Oscar-nominated portrait of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film is a production of CNN Films, TIME Studios and Tribeca Studios, in association with Montalto Pictures and Storyville Films, and was inspired by Tom Roston’s book “The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World.” Actor Denis Leary voices the restaurant’s creator, Joe Baum, drawn from decades of archival recordings.
West and Cohen were reluctant to take it on. Both were working in network television news in 2001.
“There’s like a part of you that doesn’t want to go back there,” Cohen said in a recent interview. “But when we read this book and met some of the amazing people who had worked at Windows over its 25-year history, we realized this was actually a really good way into remembering there was a lot of beautiful stuff in the Twin Towers and like we shouldn’t let that disappear just because it ended so painfully.”
What emerges is a history of how a restaurant transformed the reputation of the monolithic Twin Towers, which received little respect from architecture critics and bafflement from a public that wondered why it was built in the 1970s by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the city was fighting off financial collapse.
“This film tells a story of a restaurant that was very special to New York a time when New York was getting kicked in the teeth,” the Brooklyn-born Lomonaco said in a recent interview.
The World Trade Center operators turned to restaurant impresario Joe Baum to create a dining experience that would draw people to the Manhattan neighborhood largely known for its blocks of stores that sold radios and electronic parts. Baum was known for such New York dining landmarks as the Four Seasons and Tavern on the Green, and his new creation became an immediate hit after it opened in 1976, becoming a magnet for tourists and celebrities alike who came for the eye-popping views through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
At the time of the 9/11 attack, the World was the highest-revenue-generating privately owned restaurant in the U.S.
West noted another draw to the story was the stories of the many immigrants who worked at Windows, which proudly called itself “the U.N. of restaurants.” The film’s focus on the contribution of the foreign-born population to the restaurant industry stands in stark contrast to the image of immigrants conveyed by the Trump White House to justify its deportation efforts.
“Immigrants continue to make a contribution to our country and to the economy,” West said. “This was an opportunity to tell that positive story as opposed to what’s going on in our country now.”
Cohen and West scoured the Windows on the World Facebook page to find surviving former employees to help tell the story. Nathalie Tolentino was a hostess whose family came to the U.S. to escape political upheaval in Peru. Sekou Siby was a line cook from the Ivory Coast, who swapped shifts with one of the workers who died during a morning breakfast held in the restaurant on 9/11. Both talk about how the restaurant changed their lives.
Lomonaco is a central character in the “Top of the World,” as his arrival as the executive chef of Windows in 1997 boosted the restaurant’s culinary reputation. A hot chef who oversaw a turnaround at the 21 Club, another legendary New York dining spot, Lomonaco turned Windows into a destination for American cuisine along with the breathtaking views.
Lomonaco arrived after the restaurant was closed for three years following the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 but left the towers intact.
Once Windows on the World was gone, Lomonaco was offered high-profile restaurant jobs in other parts of the country. But he had unfinished business in New York.
“I didn’t want to abandon my city,” he said.
In the first days after the attacks, Lomonaco said, he read nothing about Windows on the World; coverage centered on the massive loss of life among the first responders and at the financial firms inside the World Trade Center. But over time, he got attention and support for the families of the employees who lost their lives that day.
Lomonaco and the restaurant’s owners formed Windows of Hope, a charitable foundation that raised more than $22 million to pay for healthcare and tuition costs for the children of the victims. “We were giving checks to people to pay their rent before federal funds came through,” he said.
Lomonaco said he still meets patrons who give him a matchbook or coaster from their visit to Windows. “They feel like they have to give me or send me these little artifacts,” he said. “That’s what has touched me the most.”
Gloria Steinem always listened more than she spoke, which is one reason her words had such lasting impact.
Ten years ago, I went with my older daughter and a group of her classmates to see Gloria Steinem speak. Though they were part of a feminist group recently formed at their all-girls Catholic high school, some were not quite sure who Gloria was, exactly. My daughter knew her mostly as my former “boss”; my first job out of college had been as an editorial assistant at Ms. magazine. That was back in the ‘80s — ancient history.
I was a tiny bit nervous about how the evening would go. Gloria herself was in her 80’s by then; how would she connect with a group of teenagers who had come of age post-post-everything in a social media world of makeup tutorials, fit checks, and so much rage bait?
By being precisely herself, as it turned out. Calm and witty, impassioned and informed, clear-eyed yet hopeful, Gloria enthralled them — and the entire audience — for almost two hours. By the time we left, the girls were ready to follow her anywhere.
“She’s a rock star,” my daughter breathed.
That she was. Gloria Steinem did not invent feminism, not even its second wave, but for many years she was its most recognizable frontwoman. Tall, slender, with (for many years) aviator glasses framed by her signature long, straight hair, she was the Jackie Kennedy of the women’s movement: a physical dismissal of all those childish critics who deride feminists as an army of unlovely and unloved women, devoid of humor and, most likely, surrounded by far too many cats.
Even so, how she looked was beside the point. No feminist I know ever wanted to look like Gloria; we all wanted to be like her. Smart, funny, incisive, generous and, perhaps above all, unflappable.
For an activist organizer, she had a low center of gravity. Her speech was measured, her tone was mellow — even when calling out the most outrageous hypocrisies, the most sinister forms of oppression, she rarely if ever raised it. Though by her own admission she was often furious about many things, her sharpest weapon was always a deadly talent for stating the obvious. “If women could sleep their way to the top, there‘d be a lot more women at the top.” “I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. ” “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.” “This is what 40 [or 50] looks like.”
She believed in shaping the future by being fearlessly frank about the present and the past. For more than seven decades, she helped millions strip away the veils of hierarchy, patriarchy and all the stories spun about gendered expectations to confront the actual experience of women’s lives. “If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?”
She never incited anger; she simply pointed out the facts as she saw them and let human nature take its course. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
Gloria listened as much as she spoke, and with great attention and democracy. When I worked at Ms., she was always running late, invariably having been pulled into some conversation or other. Her assistant groaned over her calendar; Gloria would say “yes” when asked for help, even if it meant being two places at once.
She often came in for staff meetings to which everyone was invited and, when discussing ideas for future issues, would ask for, and attentively listen to, the opinions of even a lowly editorial assistant like myself. Her interest was sincere, astonishing and made for very long meetings. Wherever she went, it was the same. She needed to know what all manner of women thought about a wide variety of topics. More important, she wanted them to learn the habit of speaking up. In a private meeting or a public forum, to colleagues, politicians, friends, the boss or even a feminist icon, she wanted women to be unafraid of saying what they thought.
When I worked at Ms., and for many years after, people would invariably ask me: “What’s Gloria Steinem like?” and it was, and remains, impossible to describe. She was kind when she didn’t need to be, generous with her attention when no one expected it. She didn’t want laws and social constructs to be fairer, less dangerous, more fulfilling for women as a concept; she wanted it for you, for me, for the lady in the back row.
She gave aura but also advice about where to find discount shoes. She instantly claimed any room she entered and then made sure there were snacks. She believed that the world could change, that with work, we could change it. But she also believed in having fun; otherwise why bother?
On the day Gloria Steinem died at 92, I awoke to a text from one of the friends I made all those years ago at Ms.; soon there were four of us on the thread. I had just arrived in New York to take my youngest daughter back to college, and we had planned to meet one of those friends in Union Square at noon. Instead, we met at Gloria’s brownstone and laid flowers along the fence outside her door. It seemed the least we could do.
My youngest never got to hear Gloria speak and, at 19, she is too young to know who Gloria was, exactly. Which was always the point of all that Gloria did. She didn’t want the future to feel beholden to the past; she just wanted it to be better. And despite the recent setbacks, particularly in reproductive rights, and all the work that still has to be done, it is.
There stood my daughter. Like her sister, she never doubts for one minute that she is a first-class citizen, entitled to equal rights, bodily autonomy, basic respect and a life of her choosing. God help the poor souls who try to tell them different.
“She’s a big part of why you are here,” I tell her. “Of why your life at 19 is so better than mine was, and why mine, at 19, was so much better than hers.”
That’s not just a rock star; that’s a revolutionary.
Eating breakfast in a South Dakota coffee shop, Gloria Steinem was all too aware of the couple eyeballing her from the next booth. He was sporting chains. She wore leather pants and what Steinem later recalled as “an improbable hairdo.” The place was packed with tough-looking, mostly male bikers pumped about a huge rally they were attending. Steinem, returning from a Sioux powwow honoring ancient tribal women, knew she wasn’t in her element.
Finally, the leather-clad woman came over and spoke up. “I just want to tell you how much Ms. magazine has meant to me over the years — and my husband too,” she told an astonished Steinem.
There was a time, the woman said, when rolling down the road meant perching on her husband’s back seat. But now she had her own sweet ride: “I even put ‘Ms.’ on my license plate, and you should see my grandkids’ faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!”
The image of that breezy, boisterous grandma stayed with Steinem for years. “I’ve come to believe that inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle,” she wrote in her 2015 memoir. “We have only to discover it — and ride.”
Steinem, the co-founder of Ms. Magazine and for six decades a charismatic leader who urged women to pursue self-affirmation, political power and equality both in the workplace and at home, died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to her foundation’s social media pages. She was 92.
“Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor,” the posts said.
An activist, journalist, and relentless traveler who said she went for 20 years without spending more than eight consecutive days in her New York apartment, Steinem described herself as “an entrepreneur of social change.”
“I raise money. I talk. I write. I tell stories. I want to do justice to the women I meet,” she told The New Yorker in 2015.
Steinem, who struggled with stage fright most of her life, talked with women at gigantic conferences and in intimate kaffeeklatsches. At book signings and on barstools, she sought their stories, sometimes re-telling them in her essays and on her countless speaking tours. Her portfolio of issues was vast, from sexual violence, female genital mutilation and racism to the more mundane injustices that helped fuel a movement for sweeping social change.
At one campus visit, the discussion turned to men who expect women to pick up after them. A young Japanese woman, silent for most of the increasingly raucous session, stood up, turned around to address 500 other audience members and said: “When my husband leaves his underwear on the floor, I find it quite useful to nail it to the floor.”
She had never before said a word in public, she told the cheering crowd.
Steinem had a “gift for empathy,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote when the feminist icon turned 80 in 2014.
“Women who read about her or saw her on TV felt that if they ran into her on the street, they would really get along with her. And women who actually did run into her on the street felt the same way. More than a half-century into her life as an international celebrity, she remains stupendously approachable, patient with questions, interested in revelations.”
Gloria Steinem, left, and Pat Carbine, two of Ms. magazine’s founding editors, in 1980.
(Dave Pickoff / Associated Press )
Famously attractive, Steinem over the years gave hope to young women who wanted to “stand up for their rights without being called man-haters,” Collins wrote. “She was evidence that it was possible to be true to your sisters while also being really, really attractive to the opposite sex.”
At the same time, she alienated the religious right with her fervent pro-choice advocacy. When Lands’ End featured an interview with Steinem in its 2016 catalog, outraged readers threatened a boycott. Company officials then cut their ties with the woman they had headlined as a “legend.”
Steinem first drew public notice when she was in her 20s and struggling to establish herself as a freelance writer. Her breakthrough story was a funny, scathing account of her two weeks as a Playboy “bunny” — a scantily clad cocktail waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Manhattan nightclub.
In some ways, the story backfired. Steinem became known not as a crusader for women but as a former bunny. For several years, her magazine assignments continued to veer toward “women’s page” topics — in 1964, she wrote about textured stockings for the New York Times — and even after she delved into serious political issues for New York magazine, she wasn’t taken as seriously as she would have liked.
In 1968, a Washington Post columnist described her as “the mini-skirted pinup girl of the intelligentsia.” Two years later, a headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Gloria: Beautiful Brain in Ditto Body.”
Meanwhile, the women’s liberation movement had propelled itself into the mainstream, ignited by writers like Betty Friedan. For Steinem, though, it became a passion only after she covered a meeting during which women opened up about their illegal abortions. The event was held to protest a legislative hearing on abortion where the only witnesses were 14 men and a nun.
“Suddenly I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong. I knew,” Steinem recalled in 1983. “I had had an abortion when I was newly out of college, and I told no one. If one in three or four adult women shares this experience, why should we be made to feel criminal and alone?”
Nearly 60 years after her unwanted pregnancy, Steinem dedicated her memoir to the British physician who arranged her abortion after she agreed to two conditions.
The first was that she never reveal his name. (She did, long after his death.)
The second: “You will do what you want to do with your life.”
Born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem didn’t attend school regularly until seventh grade. Most winters, her father Leo, an ebullient, 300-pound dreamer who was often in debt, would drive the family down back roads in a trailer, stopping here and there to sell antiques he’d picked up along the way.
Ruth Steinem, Gloria’s mother, was a former journalist who was hospitalized for long periods with severe mental health problems. From the age of 11, after her parents divorced and her older sister Susanne left home, Gloria often cared for her mom.
In an essay, “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It),” Steinem recalled her mother cutting her arm when she smashed a window to escape the Nazi invaders that only she could see. “I remember a long Thanksgiving weekend holding on to her with one hand and holding my eighth-grade assignment of ‘Tale of Two Cities’ with the other,” Steinem wrote.
Despite her patchy schooling, Steinem received a scholarship to Smith College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa after majoring in government. After spending two years in India on a fellowship, she worked briefly for an international youth organization funded by the CIA.
Basing herself in New York in 1960, she quickly became known for her stylish prose, sharp wit, and striking appearance. Within a decade she was “Gloria-Steinem-the-antiwar-gorgeous- bachelor girl who was pictured with Henry Kissinger in Time and Life…,” according to a breathless 1970 account in the Los Angeles Times.
But she was also the Gloria Steinem who helped start New York magazine, who wrote insightfully about the intersection between racism and sexism, and who in 1971 became the first woman chosen to address an annual banquet of the Harvard Law Review.
She zeroed in on the school’s failings.
“There is a course on international whaling law but none on women’s rights internationally,” she told the black-tie gathering. “An eminent professor of administrative law said as late as last night that he didn’t know what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was. The same man replied to a request that at least one full-time female professor be hired by answering that women faculty brought problems because of ‘sexual vibrations’…”
The following year, Steinem, with several other feminist journalists, founded Ms. Its first, tentative edition, a 40-page insert into New York magazine, sold out in eight days.
The debut issue of Ms. included pieces on gender stereotypes, lesbian relationships, and job discrimination. It also featured an open letter from 53 prominent women — including tennis great Billie Jean King, singer Judy Collins and Steinem — who revealed that they had undergone abortions.
While the magazine’s monthly circulation eventually topped 500,000, it also fueled skeptics. “I’ll give it six months before they run out of things to say,” newscaster Harry Reasoner predicted on national TV.
Ms. also took flak from some of Steinem’s sister feminists, who contended that it cast women as victims. As new waves of feminists confronted different issues, some became exasperated by Steinem’s seemingly perennial role as the face of the women’s movement.
“Guys in the media chose Gloria as our leader,” said feminist writer Susan Brownmiller in 2016. “A lot of us, our hope is that eventually, history will straighten this all out and say, no, Gloria came in a little later, and her very loyal supporters have backtracked that history.”
Steinem remained a contributing editor to Ms. for 15 years.
Gloria Steinem at home in New York City, 2010.
(Annie Leibovitz / Penguin Random House)
Meanwhile, she was crisscrossing the country, campaigning for liberal Democratic candidates, fighting laws restricting abortion, and urging legislators to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment.
“Like Sky Masterson, the wandering gambler in Damon Runyon stories, I’ve been in more hotel rooms than the Gideon Bible,” she wrote, “and he didn’t wash his hair with hotel soap, eat from vending machines, or sit up late organizing with the hotel maids.”
In 2013, President Barack Obama gave Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Her books include a 1983 essay collection, “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”; a 1986 portrait of Marilyn Monroe; her 2015 memoir, “My Life on The Road”; and works on aging and self-esteem.
Over the years, Steinem had longstanding romantic relationships with a number of men but vowed never to marry or have children.
However, at 66, she broke her vow and married David Bale, a British businessman and animal rights advocate. By then, the institution of marriage had changed for the better, she later explained.
“We spent 30 years in the United States changing the marriage laws,” she said. “If I had married when I was supposed to get married, I would have lost my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights.”
Three years after their marriage, Bale died of brain cancer. Steinem’s stepchildren include the actor Christian Bale.
At 80, Steinem celebrated her birthday by riding an elephant in Botswana.
In the following years, she campaigned for Hillary Clinton, spoke at the Women’s March on Washington, helped save her hometown’s last abortion clinic and gave numerous interviews denouncing President Trump’s views on women. She was the subject of an off-Broadway play and was honored by Rutgers University with the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies.
For fun, she danced. When asked by TV hosts, she occasionally demonstrated a well-worn soft shoe routine, though her heart was with the tango.
“It’s a sick, authoritarian dance,” she told a reporter, “but I loved it.”
Jared Freid remembers the moment he found his true calling in comedy.
Oddly it came after he’d already found success with his debut Netflix special “37 & Single” in 2023, which allowed him to live the stand-up dream of making it to a big streamer. But then that moment passed and the Boston-bred comic was once again starting from square one scrounging for joke ideas. That’s when he decided to dig up an old story he’d told on stage about his dad body-shaming him during a family outing in Delrey Beach, Fla.
“We’re sitting at the beach, and my dad asked me how much I weighed, and I was so mad about it,” Freid remembers. Seething at his dad for poking at his body insecurities, the comedian dealt with his emotions like any good millennial — by podcasting about it. Venting the story that took only about a minute to tell on a microphone led to more fights with his aging boomer parents soon after when they heard the episode.
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Jared Freid sits down with LA Times Entertainment Editor Nate Jackson to discuss his new Netflix hour, “The Family Plan,” which turns a beach blowup with his dad into a sharply observed, big-hearted look at boomer-millennial family warfare and reconciliation.
Scrolling back through that memory, Freid said something clicked when he thought about the alarmingly close relationship millennials still have with their parents in adulthood including still being on the family cellphone plan. “I can pay my own cellphone bill, but I’m still on their family plan,” he said. “That says something about the millennial/boomer relationship, in my opinion. We’re weirdly attached to our parents, and in a way that no other generations were tied like that, like not mushed together.”
Extending his one-minute bit into a full hour in his new Netflix special “The Family Plan” (out on Tuesday) took two and a half years of dedication polishing the story and seeing it start to resonate on tour at shows around the world. It also required him understanding that what underlies the struggles between millennials and their parents is how shockingly alike they are despite being constantly annoyed by each other. Freid now says his goal is to be a family-friendly comedian for families that usually aren’t friendly with each other but can easily agree on that fact while they laugh at jokes about themselves.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Your new one-hour special was inspired by a one-minute story you’ve told about a fight with your dad at the beach. You tapped into something really universal with the strife between boomer parents and their millennial children — a real tug of war for power that’s happening in a lot of people’s lives right now.
Totally, I and I feel it, especially because we can talk back to [our boomer parents] in a respectful way. We can have debates. You’re finding out your parents are just people too. I started telling people on my podcast, “Bring your parents.” This special is to be enjoyed with your family. You’d see a guy with his dad [at one of my shows], point at him and go “[Jared’s] talking about you!” That made me feel so good. I did it in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, I did it everywhere, and it was always just unbelievable how much people related to it and now it’s how I want to do comedy. This is who I am. This special means so much to me. It’s been a fight to get it out. I wanted it on a platform like Netflix because I want parents to watch it with their kids. It’s hard enough to get your parents on your Netflix account. Imagine getting them to watch a special on YouTube? They’re not going to do it. So I need this to be in a place where boomers and millennials can share it with each other and enjoy it together.
As an adult, what’s been the most interesting thing about seeing what things you picked up from your parents despite constantly arguing with them?
We’re exactly the same. We’re so alike that that’s probably why my dad’s asking me how much I weigh at the beach because I also look like him. It’s almost like an argument with yourself. I’m a version of him, and he’s a version of me. I have a lot of empathy for my parents. I’m 41, no kids, never married. They had to grow up while having a kid. I can’t understand that.
Right now there’s a lot of talk about divorcing your parents going around. I also can’t understand that for a second, because it’s not in my nature. For so many of the things that I go through in my life and feel frustrated by, [my parents] are, they’re my conscience a lot of times. Like when I wonder whether I should go right or left, I hear my mom in my head like, “You’re gonna go right? Why would you go right? You always go right. You’re lazy.” I hear them. I feel like I understand them more now, being older.
From selling life insurance in New York to headlining global tours and hit podcasts, Freid has built a devoted, largely female fan base that treats his stand-up like family therapy.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Every generation has their obstacles, and we’re constantly looking at each saying “Oh, you have it easy, no you have it easy!” But in your special, it kind of comes out that there’s obstacles for every group.
Totally. I don’t do comedy to make anyone feel bad. I do it to make people laugh and enjoy. And like it was cool to see a family would come to me to take a picture afterwards, and then the parents would be like, “We’re the boomers you’re making fun of.” I’m making fun of them, but I’m also making fun of ourselves [as millennials]. And I think it strikes a balance between the two because it does show that I love my family. I love how I grew up. I love that you know the people in my life. That doesn’t mean you can’t be totally angered by them.
Where did you cut your teeth in comedy?
I started in New York. I was selling life insurance and annuities in New York, and I was writing funny emails to friends. Any time we were on the same group email, Gmail, or G Chat it was always “what did we do last weekend, and what are we going to do this weekend?” And then you just make fun of each other. Anytime someone would write back “Oh my God, I’m dying at my desk. That made me laugh so hard,” I was like, “That that feels like drugs. How do I get that?” I started doing open mics, and I kind of treated it like grad school. I did improv, sketch, and storytelling. I took all these classes, and just to see what I liked, because I just wanted to be funny for my friends. Plus I could go to open mics at night, so you could add that in and feel forward momentum.
Being a millennial comedian right now seems very much like being stuck between two worlds of having the old model of success in comedy you learned from your idols and then you have people who are younger than you who are blowing up just by like posting a random video.
What you’re saying is completely right. Like we’d look up to these guys like Colin Quinn on his show “Tough Crowd,” that’s the table I wanted to sit at, and I wanted to hang out with those guys and bust each other’s chops, that’s what comedy is. I always could see myself at that table, but I also understood that table is kind of earned. You don’t just get to it because you’re funny. When I started, you could count the comedians on one hand that could do theaters, without being on a TV show. You know, there was like Brian Regan, Kathleen Madigan, Jim Gaffigan. These people weren’t on TV, but they had their audience, so it was very different to be a stand-up. Earthquake is in that group. Then you look at the sitcom people who get to do stand-up because they were on a sitcom, like you know Seinfeld and you know Ray Romano, and these are great stand-ups.
A millennial comic wedged between club legends and viral upstarts, Freid uses candid stories and crowd work to bridge generational divides — including in L.A.’s intimate, under-the-radar comedy rooms.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
How did podcasting allow you to grow your career in a different way?
I thought “well, I’m listening to these podcasts. I should start a podcast.” And I was downloading podcasts in 15-minute increments to my iPod Nano. I love talk radio. I grew up on WEI in Boston. I love sports, I like sports talk, I like high energy shows. At that time, I thought everyone had one, but now I look like I started early. I can do a podcast where I can speak directly to people who might want to come to my shows. I didn’t even think of ads. I wasn’t thinking of that stuff. I was just [thinking] I can talk right to someone who likes what I do, and I would team up with these websites… I was trying to do this internet stuff, understanding there was power there. I was caught between two worlds, working on my stand-up as kind of my nighttime job, and then doing these podcasts and contributing wherever I could as a daytime job.
When you started working with Betches Media through podcasting on shows like “U Up?” [with platform co-founder Jordana Abraham] it opened up a lane for you to suddenly grow a female audience in a way that seemed natural despite being out of the ordinary for most straight male comedians. What’s that been like to grow that type of audience?
It’s weirdly gratifying. It’s not what I was like angling towards. I think if I was angling towards a female audience as a stand-up, it wouldn’t work. I think that it would be a lie. I’m so happy with it. I feel really thankful because you know the [founders of] Betches [Abraham, Aleen Dreksler and Samantha Fishbein] they’re my sisters. The audience is family like when they come to shows I know them, you know, that’s like a beautiful thing and I think especially in the world of stand-up where all you hear about is like the Manosphere and the Rogan types, and a lot of stand-up comedy is men dragging a girlfriend to someone they think is funny because they get an ego puff out of showing a woman who they know is to be funny. And my shows are very different. It’s women bringing their boyfriends, women who now bring their husbands, couples coming together, and I love it.
Lastly, what cellphone family plan are you and your parents currently on?
Oh, we’re on T-Mobile. I’m getting kicked off by my dad currently.
Because you’re too famous?
Yeah, he’s like it’s getting embarrassing for him. I could pay for it myself. I just like, now I got to go to the store, I gotta go do it. It’s annoying.
Meow Wolf is getting closer to unveiling its Los Angeles locale. When doors open — the company is targeting late 2026 — anticipate a walk-around, floor-to-ceiling experience that pays homage to the art of cinema with a sci-fi, psychedelic-like bent.
And to bring that vision to life, the Santa Fe, N.M.-based experiential art collective will be working with nearly 40 L.A. artists across multiple mediums. Expect more than a dozen sculptural and diorama artists to contribute, along with those who specialize in mixed media for interactive and video content. Local artists will also create a number of murals for the space, and a handful of artists have been chosen to curate their own life-size rooms in the venue at West L.A.’s Howard Hughes entertainment complex.
Artist Gabriela Ruiz will be contributing a major piece to Meow Wolf L.A.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
While the bulk of a Meow Wolf exhibition is envisioned and designed by a core in-house team in Santa Fe, the company partners with dozens of local artists in each city to ensure a local flavor. Here in Los Angeles, the task of curating L.A. artists fell heavily to Han Santana-Sayles. As a SoCal native from a Mexican American family, Santana-Sayles has told me, “I would be dishonored” if the exhibit failed in its mission to capture the breadth of the L.A. population.
“It’s really important to make that intentional,” Santana-Sayles said. “I’m not just going out and saying, ‘They have art I like. I’m going to bring them in.’ It’s a combination. Yes, they’re an amazing artist, and they have a really important story for this region.”
Santana-Sayles worked closely with art curator AJ Girard as Meow Wolf’s local art liaison. Girard has spoken of being inspired by everything from L.A.’s emphasis on social media to commercialism to graffiti art.
“Social media and social capital is so relevant in our city,” Girard said. “How do we make fun of it in an avant-garde, punk, radical way? How do we poke holes at it?”
Artists tapped to create full-scale rooms at Meow Wolf L.A. include Gabriela Ruiz, who crafted an adorably vibrant, multicolored insect that will serve as a periscope, and collective Everything Is Terrible, who described their space as featuring a “cartoony, root vegetable floating alien god.”
Also look for contributions from Compton’s Charles E. Dickson, a renowned self-taught sculpture artist, whose public works can be found throughout the region, including at Metro’s Mariposa Station and outside the California African American Museum, and Jen Stark, whose geometric kaleidoscope art flirts with the natural and the synthetic. Stark’s “Chromatic Cascade” is a staple of downtown’s Art’s District.
Lauren YS (a.k.a Squidlicker) is also tapped to have a room at Meow Wolf L.A., known for hyper-vivid colors and surrealist mythology. The artist currently has a piece in “Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry” at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.
Downtown L.A. street artist S.C. Mero will be contributing a sculpture piece to Meow Wolf L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Others with exhibiting rooms include Wayne White, album artist, surrealist and puppeteer, perhaps best known for his work as the main puppet-maker for the children’s show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse; Seth Bogart, known best as a local musician (Hunx and his Punx); upcycled fashion specialist Corinne Loperfido; cartooney psychedelic artist Killer Acid; and longtime Meow Wolf contributor Nick Toll.
Finally, more than a dozen L.A. artists are listed as contributing either sculptures or dioramas to the exhibition. Those artists range from downtown L.A. street artist S.C. Mero to multidisciplinary artist Ruben Ulises to former Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival contributor Sofia Enriquez.
Meow Wolf helped define the modern immersive space. Since 2016, when the once-scrappy Meow Wolf opened Santa Fe’s “House of Eternal Return” exhibition, the company has welcomed about 10 million visitors across its four venues in locales such as Las Vegas, Denver, Houston and the Dallas suburbs.
A 17-year-old girl has been indicted in North Carolina on murder and conspiracy charges over her alleged role in livestreaming and distributing footage of the May attack on a San Diego mosque that killed three people.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posting about mounting another campaign, donning 2028 caps and discussing ways to make it happen — even as he’s acknowledged the Constitution prohibits it.
But lately, Trump has begun showing signs that even he doesn’t really believe another run will happen.
During recent speeches, the Republican president has begun describing life after the White House when his term ends in January 2029, predicting he’ll be at home and agonizing as his successor claims credit for his accomplishments.
“Your next president is going to say, ‘What a great job I did,’ ” Trump told an event on Long Island, N.Y., this month. “He’ll be sitting around, watching television. A real stiff. Unless you vote Republican, of course.”
A sitting president talking about becoming a former one is always politically fraught. But with midterm elections now just nine weeks away, Trump is approaching the point of his presidency where there will be more and more reminders that his power will soon wane.
Being willing to say he’s contemplating a White House without him marks a notable shift for Trump. Going back to his first term and from virtually the moment he won a second, he’s left the door open to staying put for more than eight years.
“He is all over the place,” said Brian Kalt, a Michigan State University constitutional law professor. “And what that does is, it allows him to point to his own words to support any number of mutually exclusive things.”
Trump can say, “ ’Oh, yeah, I made it clear that I wasn’t gonna run,’ ” Kalt said. “Or, if he decides that he will, he could say, ’Well, you know, I never said I wouldn’t.’ ”
Trump suggests his post-presidency may make him cry
The White House dismissed suggestions that Trump’s thoughts are increasingly turning to the clock running out on his presidency — and the legacy he’ll leave behind. Spokesperson Olivia Wales said he “is fighting every day” to deliver on promises to reduce violent crime, crack down on the U.S.-Mexico border and lower prescription drug prices.
“The only legacy President Trump is concerned with is making America greater than ever before,” Wales said.
Still, hinting at how he’ll be remembered is something Trump is suddenly talking about a lot.
During a recent Pennsylvania rally, he said, “Whoever the next president is, he’s going to be talking about what a brilliant president he is. And I’ll be home. And I’ll be saying, ’That son of a gun,’ because we did the job.”
A week later in Georgia, Trump was predicting that once his presidency was over, “I’ll be sitting home.”
“I may be crying,” the president added, arguing that Democrats could retake the Senate and scrap filibuster rules, making it easier to move their key legislation.
Then, in Michigan, Trump injected some doubt into whether he was ready to hand over the Oval Office and move back to Florida.
“In two and a half years, you may have a different president — may,” he said, emphasizing the “may.”
“I’ll be sitting home. I’ll be reading the papers. I’ll be watching television,” Trump said, before swiping at his predecessor, President Biden. “And I’ll be having some guy — like last time, a real idiot — stand up and say, ‘We are doing record business.’ ”
Mixed Trump signals are still most common
But even as he’s begun to suggest he’ll be leaving the presidency, Trump has also continued to tease a 2028 reelection run.
Addressing the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner last month, Trump joked, “Just like my presidency, the second time is always better” and that “the third time will be better yet. I’m only kidding.” He later wore a 2028 campaign cap to finish the speech.
The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment says no one can be elected president more than twice. It was ratified in 1951, six years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, months into his fourth term. Until Roosevelt, no other president had defied the tradition of stepping down after two terms that George Washington started.
Still, Trump had only been back in the White House for a couple of months when he told NBC News, “There are methods which you could” use to seek a third term.
He acknowledged that one method was to be the running mate to Vice President JD Vance in 2028 — then have Vance step aside if the pair won.
“There are others, too,” Trump said then, alluding to more options. He later told Time magazine, “There are some loopholes,” while also saying he didn’t believe in using them.
The president has since often used his social media posts to promote “Trump 2028” logos featuring his slogan “Make America Great Again.”
But Trump has also at times seemed definitive about the ban on him making another run, acknowledging recently to reporters: “I’d love to run, but the law is very strong.”
Kalt wrote about a two-term president possibly getting back to office by running for vice president in “constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies.”
“People do tend to find, in Trump’s words, whatever it is that they want to hear,” he said.
Trump may be fighting the ‘lame duck’ factor
Second-term presidents typically see their power and influence wane during their last two years, particularly if their party suffers big midterm defeats. But Trump’s comments could also be a sign he’s thinking about cementing his legacy, a stage that many of his predecessors also reached.
“They all, particularly as they cross the midpoint of their second term, start thinking about legacy,” said Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Clinton.
“They all banish the word. I know Clinton and Bush, they said, ’Can’t use the L-word.’ But they do,” Begala said, referring to his old boss Clinton and to President George W. Bush. “They all think about it. And the staff thinks about it and the Cabinet thinks about it.”
In his last two years of office, Clinton threw himself into trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement. Bush used the slogan “sprint to the finish” during his presidency’s final year in 2008, and Biden adopted a “run through the tape” ethos after abandoning his reelection bid.
Trump has leaned into molding the White House and Greater Washington in his own image, harkening back to his days as a real estate developer in 1970s and 1980s New York.
He’s ordered up a towering arch near the Lincoln Memorial and restored city fountains, while constructing a Rose Garden patio area and helipad on the White House lawn and adding scores of gilded touches to the building’s stately interior and exterior.
And then, there’s the massive ballroom that Trump has crews rushing to finish in the face of legal challenges — a project the president says will only be completed late in 2028, shortly before he leaves office.
“It’s not for me, ‘cause I’m going to be here a very short period of time” when the work is finished, Trump recently told reporters in the Oval Office. “I’ll be there for four, five, six months. This is for future presidents.”
